[The eternal journey continues even after the end of Time, since it seems like the essential idea of this epic comic of comics is that while time might appear to be a strictly linear phenomenon, its manifestation as life is actually a profoundly open, richly holistic, poly-temporal inter-creative experience with as many entry points, narratives, and interpretations as there are participants in it. The ever-flowing moment of the present is in fact a portal to all times -- a mysterious window which invites us to simultaneously invent the world as we explore it. While we personally might have different beginnings, adventures, and inevitable endings, together our searching individual journeys map the living landscape of our boundless humanity and reality.

Also, castle silhouettes look crazy cool. (And I wonder what thermodynamics says about Time having a sequel...?)

I don't really get it. Nothing is happening. Yet I am sitting here, staring at it. Thinking about what those two might be thinking about. Maybe they just talked about something, something important perhaps. Maybe they're content just to sit there, together in silence. Watching time happen.

Right-clicked, viewed source, the comic was "time.png" not a Flash file, no javascript wrapped around it, so unless there's some PHP that's going to update this image (at the time of this post, a girl and a guy sitting on a black gnoll with blank white sky) I'm guessing he's trying to be deep here. I guess we'll see in the morning.

I only waited about 30 seconds. I figure maybe if you load it at midnight or noon or 1:37 P.M. or something it might be different. It's more likely it's just a static image.

arbivark wrote:when i was first a tenant at 19, i was probably a nuisance .. a bother, to the landlord because i'd do stuff like, hey there's a fireplace here, get me a hammer, hey if i make a hole in my ceiling there's an attic that runs the length of the rowhouses.

I think the text that appears is supposed to be a subscript, answer, or complement to the title. Like: "Time. Wait for it" or "Time: wait for it." The "it" is time, not some event that's going to happen if you stare at the comic long enough. I don't think it's a literal command. From my interpretation of the comic, it is just supposed to be poetic.

Either way, I love it. Great comic. I liked it enough for me to sign up for this forum and give my opinion about it.

This. If I had to venture a guess, something (probably the date) is being hashed to create the url. Under different circumstances (like maybe tomorrow), we get a different url and a different picutre. The hash is to prevent us from skipping ahead or understanding it ahead of when we're supposed to. I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

I think I may have got it figured out. I just tried refreshing the page after an hour and noticed that the image looks slightly different than before. Very similar, but the stick figures are positioned a little differently. I had this thread open in another tab, so I refreshed it there too and it definitely changed. Someone should start saving periodic copies if there isn't going to be an archive with all the variations...

I looked at the Response when one does a HEAD Request for http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/time.png. It gives a 301 Moved Permanently response. If Randal intended to change it, he would have used a 302 Found Response.

I also look forward to see where this is going.

I got the same URL that rainspeaker got. The time is now March 24 05:07 UTC.

Wow, this is really clever. There is no javascript or other client-side functionality, and the image urls are hashed, so we can't skip ahead on our own. We can only wait for the server to push out updates.

I've got copies of the first three images. The two links already posted are actually to the second and third slides; I don't have a link to the first, though, only an image.Edit: here.Like I said, it's almost identical to frame 2, but not quite.

I am loving this. We have no way to cheat the system, just wait for time itself to pass before seeing the next tiny bit of movement in the story.

We all know the level of work Randall has put into previous projects, be it Click and Drag, or some of the more intense graphs. If he applied a similar amount of time on this project as he has a graph like Money, this animation could well go on for more than a month, even more.

Regardless, I am loving the simplicity and beauty of the story - Up to everybody's personal interpretation of every frame.